Vietnam e-commerce startup Opencommerce completes its latest financing round to support expansion in China
Vietnam’s cross-border e-commerce startup OpenCommerce has completed its latest financing round to support operations in China.
VNG Corporation, a Vietnamese technology unicorn specializing in online games, digital content, cloud services, has led a USD7 million series A financing round for OpenCommerce.
The Hanoi-based company, which was founded in 2014 by Quan Truong and Phuong Anh Ha, has a business model similar to Canadian e-commerce company Shopify that specializes in helping direct and indirect cross-border merchants, local SMEs to sell their products to global consumers. Aside from its online marketplace, its suite of solutions also includes tools for order management, marketing, shipping, digital payments.
OpenCommerce said it has facilitated transactions worth USD2 billion so far, helping more than 80,000 merchants worldwide to create websites, find supplier, and export goods with its suite of services.
OpenCommerce said it would use the fresh capital to help it gaining market share in China as well as expanding to Southeast Asian countries in the near future.
Despite the highly competitive market in China, the company will expand its operations because 30% of its merchants came from the country. China is OpenCommerce’s second biggest market after Vietnam where 50% of its merchants came from, and major global competitor such as Amazon and Alibaba have major presence.
According to OpenCommerce’s CEO Truong, the company resembles Shopify, but it gives much more attention on operations, working directly with vendors to create, source, warehouse and ship goods.
“OpenCommerce “is one of the few companies in Vietnam whose products can compete with major global competitors in the cross-border e-commerce space,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.
Truong said the company’s vast network has helped it find alternative solutions and overcome supply chain jams during the Covid-19 pandemic, such as switching suppliers when Covid-19 hit and caused lockdown in China in 2020 and southern Vietnam in 2021.
VNG, which reportedly counts Tencent as one of its major backer, actively involved in online games, social networking platforms and online payments. The company expanded the scales of businesses through acquisitions and investments,it has invested in local e-commerce startups, including Tiki and Telio, EcoTruck, and Got It.